BenStezakerArt

Ben Stezaker is on sparkling form at the gallery throughout May! Photos by @benstezaker @benstezaker @onetotengallery #cameraobscura #projection #alternativephotography #projectspace #instagramgallery

Exhibition No:49 Ben Stezaker PROJECTED OPACITY This is the first projection at one-to-ten gallery and the whole space has been transformed by an image which is both familiar and made strange. #cameraobscura #projection #alternativephotography #smallprojectspace #minigallery @benstezaker @onetotengallery

@benstezaker has an talent of turning the seemingly ordinary into something extraordinary. His photograms of obscured domestic glass that fracture light, to me, create whole universes or microscopic organisms all at once. (First 3 slides) Ben had an exhibition of these in December at St Leonards gallery @project78gallery and a book published by @brackenbooks_ to accompany the show. Available through our website, I’ll put a link in stories. Ben also has a show in our @theconservatoryhastings project space this March. @anniemackinart takeover

Opacities by Ben Stezaker is now available and all preorders will be shipped this week. Get yours now as they’re selling fast. Ben Stezaker’s first monograph of his seminal project Opacities. Published by Bracken books winter 2025 for his solo show at Project 78, this hardback mixed media printed book is an edition of 150 and comes with a signed digital print, a risograph printed folded poster print and Thermograph raised silver dust jacket. A truly unique monograph for an incredibly talented and up and coming artist. The ‘Opacities’ are darkroom photo grams of what is often called obscured glass, the kind of glass one finds in private parts of domestic homes. The sheets of glass act as compound lenses, fracturing and refracting light to specific focal points directly onto light sensitive paper. These photo grams or contact prints reveal, as one would expect, something of the hidden structure of glass and its peculiarity as neither a liquid nor a solid. But what couldn’t be anticipated was the strange, uncanny space created in this hybrid world of geometric, crystal structure and fluid, organic form. In the process of making the photo grams a single millimetre movement of the glass from the photographic paper can dissolve crystal formations into visceral, organic shapes. The series celebrates an intimate and indexical connection between these two most dominant media of transparency in our culture – glass and photography. - Ben Stezaker.

Preorders are now live for @benstezaker first monograph “Opacities”. Launching this Saturday alongside his solo show @project78gallery this beautiful hardback book features an in depth look at his project and the range of patterns created by his collection and darkroom manipulation of glass. With opening essay by @miversen.essex and a editioned digital print with each copy this one will sell fast. . #book #photobook #photography #darkroom #photographybook #monograph #artbook #art #artist #hastings #sussex #benstezaker

I would be delighted if you could attend the opening of my solo exhibition ‘Looking At Seeing Through’ @project78gallery on the 15th of November 2025. The opening will be from 6-8pm and the address is: 78 Norman Rd, Saint Leonards-on-sea TN38 0EJ.  
Alongside the show I will be launching my new monograph ‘Opacities’ which is a more extensive representation of the work on show, published by @brackenbooks_ .   The show is then open from 11am-5pm Wednesday to Saturday until the 13th December.    I look forward to seeing you there. - ‘Looking At Seeing Through’ is a show of three series of cameraless photographic works by Ben Stezaker. ‘In our contemporary culture of media transparency it is sometimes difficult to remember that we are looking at images. We are habituated to seeing through them as if transparent windows. Only when that transparency is disrupted are we aware of the image itself. The ‘Opacities’ are photograms of what is often called obscured glass, the kind of glass one finds in private parts of domestic homes. The sheets of glass act as compound lenses, fracturing and refracting the light to specific focal points directly onto light sensitive paper to create indexical traces of light in negative. The ‘Transparencies’ are solarised darkroom inversions of the ‘Opacities’ converting them back to positives. These photograms or contact prints reveal, as one would expect, something of the hidden structure of glass and its peculiarity as neither a liquid nor a solid. But what couldn’t be anticipated was the strange, uncanny space created in this hybrid world of geometric, crystal structure and fluid, organic form. In the process of making the photograms a single millimeter movement of the glass from the photographic paper can dissolve crystal formations into visceral, organic shapes. The series celebrates an intimate and indexical connection between these two most dominant media of transparency in our culture – glass and photography. The ‘Opacities’ and ‘Transparencies’ have been the result of over three years of darkroom explorations and experimentation. Resulting in a handful of unique photographic prints which make up the series on display.’

I am delighted to announce that a selection of 5 images from my ‘Bridge’ series will be on show @unit2stleonards for Metal is Major. A group show curated by @itll.bee.ok as a part of @coastalcurrentsfestival PV - 19th September 6:30-9:40pm Bridge (2022-24) 8x10 inch Archival giclée prints. Over the past 5 years I have been photographing the over-painted erasures of graffiti made by council workers in Brighton and London. The most recent group of these are the ‘Bridge’ and ‘Temple’ series which are photographs taken on two parallel slip-road bridges into London. The title ‘Bridge’ has a double meaning. Firstly, it’s the location of the photographs and secondly, I think of the images themselves as bridges between the worlds of visual experience: painting and photography; the gallery and the street. As the series of photographs developed over several years the focus of attention shifted from the found, unintentional paintings and the various artists to which they inadvertently seemed to allude to, to an interested in the relation with the frame. Soft pastel colours juxtapose the rusted bleeding structure of the bridge which now spanned a separation in time: Edwardian England and the contemporary world and the framing devices of museums and engineers.  Find the rest of the series on my website linked in my bio

I am pleased to announce a piece from my ‘Opacities’ series has been selected for ‘In Praise of Darkness’. A group show curated by @colin_booth_ and @nealewillis that will be held @unit2stleonards gallery in conjunction with @electro_studios_project_space and @collected.fictions . PV: 8th August 6:30-9:30. Opacity (2024) 8 x 10 inch double exposed silver gelatin photogram. Check out the rest of the series linked in my bio. This particular work was made during my @flatland_projects residency ❤️

Fresh Salad x The Farm Summer residency Ben Stezaker Long Exposures (2025) sun faded books - Install The ‘Long Exposures’ are a series of found sun-faded, cloth-covered hardback books collected over the last year, in which the ghost images of adjacent books or book ends have left their imprint as silhouettes. As the books are arranged and rearranged on bookshelves over years, a series of multiple exposures to ambient light create geometric collages of superimposed images of what has been. In a way, these are unintentional ready-made photographs which have been developed (without the human hand) over decades of sunlight exposure. Unlike most photographic processes where light creates darkness on sensitised paper, the light is removing the colour/ pigment and leaving an image of what was once present: light creating an image of light. One piece in the series stands alone. Rather than being an image of a series of other books and objects, it is an image made through the dust cover of the book itself. The dust cover has acted as an intermediary negative and over time an inversion of the cover photograph has been imprinted onto the book cloth in negative. Through conversation on the project with Fraser Carr Miles @brackenbooks_ , I was introduced to a particular discontinued coloured card stock used for book covers. Fraser had had problems with it fading extremely quickly to short term light exposure. This gave me the idea of producing an image in the same manner and then allowing it to disappear with time. I had taken a series of images of ‘Passages’ and apertures @thecryptgallerylondon during a residency there. This was because some of the ‘Long Exposure’ shadow imprints I had collected reminded me of doors and windows. I thought it would be interesting to use these as acetate positives to exposure onto this card. I left them outside in the Farm Mews for the two-week duration of the residency. My plan is to then do an exhibition that will stage their disappearance. I cannot thank @ar.chie.art and @bbencoleman from @freshsaladart and @billredshaw_ from @thefarm.artspace enough for putting on this residency and show and making it such a great experience.

Opacities (2023-Present) 8x10 inch silver gelatin photograms   The ‘Opacities’ are photograms of what is often called obscured glass, the kind of glass one finds in private parts of domestic homes.  The sheets of glass act as compound lenses, fracturing and refracting the light to specific focal points directly onto light sensitive paper. The resultant images reveal, as one would expect, something of the hidden structure of glass and its peculiarity as neither a liquid nor a solid. But what couldn’t be anticipated was the strange, uncanny space created in this hybrid world of geometric, crystal structure and fluid, organic form. In the process of making the photograms a single millimeter movement of the glass from the photographic paper can dissolve crystal formations into visceral, organic shapes. The series celebrates an intimate and indexical connection between these two most dominant media of transparency in our culture – glass and photography. In this hidden and opaque space are generated ambiguous configurations which are both abstract matrices and photographic images. This ambiguity of the image seems to free the viewer from the ties that these different image expectations make, allowing the viewer a freedom for imaginary projection. The images of glass seem to reveal something of that exact same ambiguity in the photographic image, their simultaneous crystalline fixity and organic fluidity, as one medium of transparency creates an image of itself in another medium of transparency. Check out my website linked in my bio to see the rest of the series. Big thank you to @flatland_projects for giving me the time and space to develop this project and @brackenbooks_ for the darkroom equipment which made it all happen! Exciting things to come 📷 - @alexanderbrattell @aceagrams @delawarr @talentaccelerator_ @eastbournealive @uobphotography

Opening tomorrow! I’m pleased to announce that my recent work will be on show with @flatland_projects this Saturday 3rd February from 4-7pm with some very talented artists following a 6 month artist residency. It will take place @beechingroadstudios (Unit 7 Beeching Road, Bexhill, East Sussex, TN39 3LG) and will be running for a month. It would be lovely to see you there! Image II Opacity (2023-24) Silver Gelatine Contact Print. Flatland Futures artist residency is sponsored by the Arts Council England @aceagrams , De La Warr @delawarr , Eastbourne Alive @eastbournealive , East Sussex Arts Partnership, Rother District council, UK Government and Talent Accelerator @talentaccelerator_ .

Enigma, 2022-23 4x5 giclee print mounted on 8x10 card. In this series I am using the photographic process to explore what is revealed through concealment and also what is concealed through being revealed. The covered, amorphous, objects are seen differently by each individual viewer who finds recognisable patterns in unrelated shapes where the mind determines what it sees rather than it already being determined for it. I use the camera apparatus to freeze the flowing fabric and in doing so transforming it to stone. The covers, meant to hide and protect, instead, reveal a totally new way of seeing the objects. What do you see?